You’re 100% correct, what’s happening to these people is cruel and it’s wrong, but you may need to check further. Our local Indigenous people (the Potawatomis) get free gov’t health care, do not pay any taxes, have their own police force and their own tribal laws. They also have several thousand acres of land, and are the only people in Michigan permitted to own and run a Casino. When there is conflict between the laws the rest of us follow, and any member of the Potawatomis tribe, they successfully claim their only “peers” (the people who can be on a jury) are tribal members. Only tribal members can work in their hotels and casinos, and if a non-tribal member misbehaves in a Casino, the “white” police are expected to come pick up whoever is misbehaving.

IF the pipeline was going through someplace other than tribal land, the “Right of Eminent Domain” would automatically kick in… So, while what is being done to them is totally wrong, are the indigenous people totally right? Remember, these people only take money from the government — they don’t pay anything into it. What is being done is WRONG — but what’s the “right” way to settle this?

There’s so much to address here that, sadly, there’s no hope of doing so adequately with my time constraints.

What I can say is that my readings reveal enormous, systemic hardships endured almost universally by Native Americans at USG hands. If a handful fare well due to casinos, that is anomaly rather than rule.

The hardships Native Americans endure are rooted, IMO, in imperialism that expresses itself many ways. We also see this in the USG attacking any and every foreign country from which it feels it can derive financial gain. Life and other nations’ sovereignty are inconsequential to this imperialistic view.

The problem is imperialism; this, simply one expression.

(There are so many other ills related to this imperialism, including the rampant suffering of non-Native peoples here, but that’s outside the scope of a comment tapped out on my phone during my short break!)

Re: Eminent Domain, there are different land requirements applicable to Native lands. That’s part of what RFK, Jr. gets at when he addresses the unlawfulness of DAPL’s actions in an eight-minute video I linked to another commenter. I highly recommend giving it a watch!